Darren Elkins said UFC Vegas 120 will be his last dance, and the veteran featherweight will make that final UFC walk against Yadier Del Valle on Saturday night. After 30 trips under the UFC banner since 2010, the 42-year-old said he is ready to stop.
He explained the decision on Wednesday during media day, saying the body simply does not recover the way it once did. Elkins said he is getting hurt a little bit more often as he gets older, and that training all the time has started to take more of a toll than it used to. He also said he talked it over with his family before deciding it was time, because he wanted to lay his gloves in the octagon and ride off into the sunset rather than step away in some quieter way.
That ending fits a career that has stretched more than 16 years and produced a 19-11 UFC record. Elkins said he has always wanted to leave the sport inside the cage, and that he never expected a clean, scripted exit. He has been here long enough to know how the UFC works, and he said the job has always been simple: show up and do it well enough to keep going.
The path to this retirement was not sudden. Elkins said he had thought about it before, including after losing to Hacran Dias in Brazil in 2014, before following advice to switch teams. That move sparked a six-fight winning streak, with victories over Dennis Bermudez and Michael Johnson before Alexander Volkanovski ended the run. For Elkins, the larger point is that he kept evolving long enough to stay relevant in a sport that usually moves on quickly.
There is, though, a twist in how his post-UFC future may look. Elkins said he may stay active in competition that does not involve punches and kicks to the face, including wrestling for RAF. He drew a hard line at bare-knuckle boxing. Asked about BKFC, he said he would probably die, and added that his MMA fights are bloody enough that he had already promised his wife he would not even look at it.
Del Valle, 10-1, brings a different kind of finish to the matchup. He has already shown sharp submission work in the UFC, scoring back-to-back first-round rear-naked choke finishes over Connor Matthews and Isaac Dulgarian before losing a decision to Jordan Leavitt in his most recent appearance. Elkins said he expected a younger opponent in a retirement fight, and Del Valle fits that picture in more ways than one: he was 10 years old when Elkins made his pro MMA debut in Chicago.
So the final picture is simple. UFC Vegas 120 will close out Elkins’ UFC run, but it may not close the book on competition altogether. What remains unanswered is how much he still has to give once the gloves come off for good, and whether his next appearance, if there is one, comes on a mat instead of under the bright lights of the UFC.
